In an interview on last Sunday's 60 Minutes, Leslie Stahl asked if the term "cruel and unusual punishment" applies to someone "being brutalized by a law enforcement person," Scalia replied: "To the contrary, has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't...

I think highly of Ivan Eland as a person and as a foreign policy analyst. His piece on today's site on the danger of recruiting into the military people with bad records of behavior is on target. On the way to making his points, though, Ivan writes the following: One...

Just to add a little to last month’s post, “Is the Pentagon Policy Shop Funding Likudist Fronts?”, on Devon Gaffney Cross’ London-based Policy Forum for International Security Affairs, Jeffrey Gedmin’s (?) Case for Freedom, and Anatol Sharansky’s...

After an absence of a couple of weeks, ICasualties.org is coming back online. ICasualties.org is the best source for details on US casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They have compiled an extensive database of this information, which is sortable by state,...

In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense...

This morning I received a request to sign an “Economists’ Statement in Support of John McCain’s Economic Plan.” The statement laid out his plans to prevent taxes from rising, to reduce some taxes, such as the corporate income tax, to support free trade...

A couple hundred Ron Paul supporters gathered in front of the Capitol today to hear speakers organized by the Granny Warriors. I stopped by mid afternoon. I was told by one attendee that “Ron Paul came by and spoke around 11:15. Unfortunately, the sound system was...

Dick Cheney is a liar. A lousy one. He is again threatening that "al Qaeda in Iraq" (which he would have you believe is interchangeable with the "al Qaeda in Waziristan" he let escape in 2001) will take over the fertile crescent if U.S. forces withdraw. In this...

Justin is completely right to criticize Bob Barr for failing to adhere to libertarian, non-interventionist foreign policy principles concerning Latin America. But for the sake of clarification for our readers, I must take issue with something Justin said regarding the...

For 3 Years! On Monday, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing a penalty of three years imprisonment on Israeli vehicle-owners who take their vehicles to mechanics in the West Bank. I cannot even guess at the justification.